From photorealism to digital film photography. Remedial and meta-visual transitions in ‘Werk ohne Autor’

Abstract

By analyzing Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Werk ohne Autor (Never Look Away, 2018), this paper aims to investigate the ways Caleb Deschanel conveys Gerhard Richter's artistic account. By placing the photorealism pioneer’s creative process in the digital scenario, Deschanel mobilizes – in a generative, regenerative, and performative way – techno-aesthetic features of contemporary cinematography that create actual metavisual transitions which are situated at the intermedial intersection of painting, photography, and cinema, while also consolidating the renewed connection between the digital image and the painterly image. A wide range of conceptual significances and theoretical references – off the visual culture studies, media studies, and film aesthetics – substantiates the metavisual transitions processed by Deschanel and provides this essay with an intentionally multifaceted and multiperspective methodological approach.